Research from the University of Guam (UOG) has been published in this month's issue of the International Journal of Plant Sciences. The research was conducted within the Western Pacific Tropical Research Center (WPTRC) at ...

This June, I walked the wilds of Los Angeles looking for lizards. And snakes. And turtles. And because I was finally looking for them, I also began seeing them—and isn't that a basic truth of life as well as citizen science?

Pioneering research from the University of Southampton into the health impacts of spaceflight has been identified as a possible experiment to be conducted by British astronaut Tim Peake on his maiden voyage to the International ...

Remember the science fair? For some of us it was an exciting time of creative experimentation. For others it was a time of botched and badly displayed data. For 16-year-old Maria Elena Grimmett, it's a blast. And she isn't ...

A University of Exeter scientist is set to send thousands of microscopic worms on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in an experiment aimed at increasing our understanding of what triggers the body to build ...

Sea level rise from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland threaten catastrophe for coastal cities within decades unless strong measures are taken to reduce CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels, argues climate ...

Untreated ballast water discharge from ships can spread living organisms and even pathogens across the world thereby introducing non-native or invasive species into the local environment. Scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München ...

When unsafe levels of lead are found in drinking water, the culprit has typically been lead pipes or lead-containing brass and bronze fittings, but in a new study researchers clearly show that lead present in the zinc coating ...

In recent years, government assessments have raised concerns about the nation's science workforce. Writing in an article for BioScience, Gregory T. Rushton and a team of researchers looked for clues in the National Center ...

Science

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") refers to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique or practice.

In its more restricted contemporary sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method, and to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word. Science as discussed in this article is sometimes called experimental science to differentiate it from applied science—the application of scientific research to specific human needs—although the two are often interconnected.

Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human knowledge and understanding through disciplined research. Using controlled methods, scientists collect observable evidence of natural or social phenomena, record measurable data relating to the observations, and analyze this information to construct theoretical explanations of how things work. The methods of scientific research include the generation of hypotheses about how phenomena work, and experimentation that tests these hypotheses under controlled conditions. Scientists are also expected to publish their information so other scientists can do similar experiments to double-check their conclusions. The results of this process enable better understanding of past events, and better ability to predict future events of the same kind as those that have been tested.